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Ephthertese (language)
Ephthertese is the language spoken by the eponymous immigrants to the Empire. It is the only language of its kind and has several unique features (most prominently its three levels of animacy). The adoption of the Ephthertese Quonderan Model has significantly elevated the language as many Ephthertese words passed into the general scientific lexicon and into common speech. Ephthertese remains the first language of most of the Ephthertese ethnic group, though nearly all Ephthertese speak Common Iinrese or a different lingua franca. Ephtertese multilingualism and cultural insularity result in very few non-Ephthertese speaking the language beyond a few words. Notes * a lot of aspiration and lenis sounds * they are non-rhotic or use a... *has three levels of animacy: animate (having self-caused causal action), instrumental (having causal action but not self-caused, rare), inanimate (having no causal action) *Perhaps ergative/absolutive? Phonology Consonants Vowels Phonotactics *bilabial plosives are rarely word-initial (words don't start with p, b) Grammar Noun and Noun Declensions *2 number cases *3 animacy cases Animacy Ephthertese asserts three levels of animacy, which have a major impact on the language. The first, animate or keniate, indicates something that has sentience and causal action. Examples are humans and most higher animals. Oddly, some celestrial bodies are included in this category as well. The second category is instrumental and indicates something that has innate causal power, but is not sentient or self-caused. Examples are physical forces and elements (winds, gravity--if they knew about it), mechanisms with complex interior parts (clocks, engines, machine--if thought of as the source of movement, the chenet, rather than the structure), written and spoken speech (books, instructions, etc), most plants and lower animals (trees and insects). The last category is the inanimate group. This group includes the remaining things that are considered to have no causal action or sentience. This includes most non-living and non-mechanical things, such as materials (like cloth, iron, paper, air--as an element, not a force), food (apple, tenderloin but "seed" is instrumental). It also includes names of machines that are not considered as a causal thing. For example, a ship is inanimate, though its engine is instrumental, and its pilot is animate. It also includes most structures and tools (house, auger). People groups are also usually inanimate. Animacy levels have little effect on a word's singular form (though some scholars have attempted to argue that a singular form or forms for each animacy level once existed in Ephthertese), it does influence the plural form, and most words that refer to the noun (such as possessive adjectives, genitive nouns, and verbs). Nominative The nominative form of the noun consists of a root and a stem. The noun's root is the first section of the word and often takes up the majority of the nominative form. The stem is the vowel/consonant pair at the end of the noun. Sometimes the stem in the nominative form is left empty (e.g., phtht or phth-t) in which the stem's vowel is not depicted. Genitive For most nouns in the genitive, the genitive marker is inserted before the noun's singular or plural stem. The genitive marker agrees with the referent noun's number and animacy. Adjectives * There are few distinctions between adjectives and adverbs (most are similar to "fast" and "daily" in English), though there is a new construction used for adjectives. The use of the old construction is now reserved primarily for adverbs and its use for adjectives, while technically correct, signals age. * like po- in Russian or -ly in English = - chom Verb and Verb Conjugations Dictionary Category:Languages